‘This is 40’ and the new wave of comedy

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I just saw “This is 40” last night on a double-date with my sister and TheBoss. I was hesitant going in because many critics have crushed Judd Apatow’s latest film calling it a sloppy, overlong, self-indulgent mess.

 

I felt differently though. I found it to be brutally honest and to go for uneasy truths over quick payoffs.  And this is the way comedy seems to be headed now.  The film feels less like “Knocked Up” and more like a 2.5 hour episode of “Louie.”

There’s a quote in Flavorwire from comedian Mike Birbiglia about how this trend is emerging, 

“I’d like to think that we’re part of a comedy movement right now that’s moving away from observational comedy and into something that’s more personal and real. But it’s just one person’s opinion — it’s what I prefer because I feel like it has more heart to it. It’s got more teeth. And I feel like in some ways it’s a response to the Seinfeldian era of comedy, which was observational to a point of brilliance. I mean, Seinfeld did it so well, and there were so many mimeographs of that style, and then at a certain point, those mimeographs became so boring … It’s actually more difficult to just tell your story, and tell it honestly, and admit that you’re wrong about things in a way that’s entertaining.”

I can definitely see this happening. It’s in the Louis CK specials and in Lena Dunham‘s “Girls.”  It’s a cool trend and I like where we’re headed. 

My Top Albums of 2012

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I don’t really listen to entire albums anymore but it’s still fun to look at which albums were my favorite for the past year.  I tend to split my time listening to iTunes/iPod and the service Rdio.  Luckily, both of them send my play counts to Last.fm so my profile can tell me all about my listening habits this past year. 

 

  1. Divine Fits – A Thing Called Divine Fits 
  2. Mumford & Sons – Babel
  3. Jack White – Blunderbuss
  4. Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls
  5. Band of Horses – Mirage Rock

All of them are great.  Divine Fits dominated my running playlist for a while with “For Your Heart” and “Would That Not Be Nice” being my two favorite songs.  The two songs from Alabama Shakes (“I Ain’t The Same” and “Hold On“) were probably my two favorite tunes of the year.  Mumford was good for just all occasions, and this song, “Trash Tongue Talker” from Jack White is just great.

You can find the mp3’s for these and more of my favorite tunes at iLikeThisSong.com where I post a new great tune every week or so. 

What songs were your favorite this year?bal

iPhone5: 3 months in

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I wrote a post about 4 months ago about the iPhone5 and what I thought about it.  This was before i had purchased it or even used it.  

I have now been using my iPhone 5 for over 3 months and really love it. It’s a nice upgrade over the 4. I like the thinner size, the bigger screen, the faster processor, and the super awesome camera.   All things considered, it’s pretty damn sweet.  I even have been using Siri in the car to play music and send quick text messages.

There’s a lot of buzz around Apple maps being terrible and some android phones being better.  For me, Apple maps have been great although i just installed Google Maps and found that to be even better.  I’m sure some Android phones are better or at least come close to the iPhone, but at this point, they are all basically the same.  We’re so far past regular cell phones that are just phones that we’re all winners.  These smartphones are just ridiculous in what they can do.  Quibbling over megapixels, LTE coverage, the number of apps, and features such as turn-by-turn is such a great problem to have. 

Hostess Bailout

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Good one:

Hostess Bakery plants shut down last Friday, the result of a union strike idling some 18,000 workers.  The federal government will hire most or all of these displaced employees.  Meaning….

The State Department will hire the Twinkies, the Secret Service the Ho Hos, the generals will sleep with the Cupcakes, and all the Ding Dongs are going to Congress.

Thanks to Mac and Rob Braunohler for the joke – also for pointing me to the funny John Stewart comments about it.   Here’s Mr. Steward, doing his thing:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Employees Strike Back – Twinkie’s End
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

 

9 weeks in: a report

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I last did a report about life with Hunter when I was 3 weeks in.  Since then, I’ve learned a few more things.

Getting up in the middle of the night repeatedly can make a man (and mom) batshit crazy.  For us (and most people), the getting up in the middle of the night to feed the child never stops and is totally exhausting.  Diane and I are taking turns who gets up for the main feeding in the middle of the night.  We found that if the same person keeps doing it, that person becomes not so fun to hang out with.  We’ll see how this new experiment goes.

Hunter is not always happy

Continue reading “9 weeks in: a report” →

Election Thoughts: Twitter and Nate Silver

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The election is over and we can get on with our lives.  For me, living in Colorado meant that our television stations were nothing but ads either telling us that Romney was a bastard or that Obama was incompetent.  I know people who believe those messages and I don’t want to really talk about whether they’re right or wrong. It’s just exhausting.

I loved watching my Twitter feed on election night. I have to say that for live, unpredictable events like disasters, elections, and sports, – twitter really shines.  That said, i was also really impressed with the coverage on television.  The big board on CNN was way more informative with actual stats than any other medium. They knew where things were going down, when they were happening, and why. Twitter was snarky and fun but TV was actually helpful.

The big winner to me for this election was Nate Silver.  If you don’t know Nate, and I didn’t until a little it ago, he’s a guy who first gained recognition for developing a system for forecasting the performance of professional baseball players.  One day he woke up and wanted to the same for politicians.  Last election in 2008, he built FiveThirtyEight.com (538 is the total number of electoral votes out there) and used his crazy smart algorithms to predict, with really cool charts, who would win.  When the final votes came in, he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 state and all 35 Senate races that year.  Way closer than almost every one else.   Continue reading “Election Thoughts: Twitter and Nate Silver” →

David Brooks: A Good Marriage is Equal to Doubling Your Income

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David Brooks, one of the better columnists out there was interviewed by Alec Baldwin a few months ago on the Here’s the Thing podcast.  It’s a really interesting interview.  The entire thing is here but below is my favorite 4 minutes of the interview is where he talks about the book he wrote and why it’s so important to choose a good spouse.

The first few seconds of this clip below is about his book is about why kids drop out of high school. He found in his research that you can tell in the first 18 months of kid’s life whether they will or not.  Apparently, kids who can form attachments at an early age can form emotional attachments with teachers and peers later in life and they’ll generally be okay.  If you can’t, life if very frustrating.

The second part of this short clip he shares some of his thoughts on marriage.  I found it interesting to hear that he goes around and tells people, “If you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you’ll be miserable. If you have a crappy career and a great marriage, you’ll be happy.”  I like the thought of that.  If this is true, then all the courses you should take in college should be about who you should marry.

He then talks more about happiness and makes the point that money only correlates a little to happiness and that studies have shown that, of people who are happy, they have a good marriage and that the happiness gain of a good marriage is equal to that of doubling your income.

The link to listen to the pod is here

This may be why I was so willing to quit my job in 2009 – because I was about to get married.

Capturing a Photo Every 30 Seconds

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I hang out with some pretty cool people at work.  And, i’ve got some great people to go home to too. I capture a lot of moments on Instagram (which i love) and have lately been trying out Snapjoy (Boulder company) and Picturelife as possible places to replace my Flickr as my online photo storage.

Recently though, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not enough. I want to capture more photos and more of my life. Lots of cool stuff is happening every day, both at work and at home that are just passing by.  I want to capture those too. So, you can imagine my happiness when i discovered a little gadget called Memoto.  What is it? It’s a little square that’ll snap a photo of wherever you are and whatever you’re doing every 30 seconds.  This is a 5 MP camera in a tiny little device.  That’s 4 GB of photos i’ll be capturing every day.  Now we’re talking.

Here’s a little video of the device:

I backed the project on Kickstarter so i don’t actually have the device yet.

One other things i’ve been using lately: Strava.  This used to be an app that tracks the crap out of your bike rides.  But, they’ve now added running tracking in there.  Before i stumbled upon Strava, I tested out RunKepper and MapMyRun and liked Runkeeper the best of those two, but after using Strava just a few times, i can tell that it’s better than both of them.

Lewis Thoughts: Politics Edition

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This election is nasty. I don’t really like the message coming out of both camps.  But, i see their respective points.  Here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to list what i like and don’t like about each candidate.

Romney: Pros

  • Wants to shrink government in many ways. Less regulation, less agencies, less spending all over the place. I love this. I totally agree.  Our government is way too large and does way too many things.  We should push lots of it back to the states if possible and just stop it in other places.
  • Wants to reduce the deficit and get back to being fiscal conservative.

Romney: Cons

  • Women. Abortion and birth control.  I feel that women should have access to both and I don’t like any candidate who shoots to make abortion illegal, who wants to elect Supreme Court justices who are against it, or one who feels like birth control is a bad thing in America.  This is just so far away from my way of thinking.
  • Wars. I want to be involved in as few wars as possible.  If i was a politician, i’d propose a strategy called “not my problem” and do everything i can to support the UN but would do almost nothing independently.  I’d do everything i can to not start new engagements.  Romney’s plan is basically the opposite of this.  He wants the US to re-assert themselves. He wants to increase government spending in defense.  I prefer we decrease it.
  • Heath Care.  Obamacare is a massive piece of legislation. It has lots of rules and has govenment telling a lot of people what to do.  I don’t necessarily like that.  However, every single person i’ve talked to who works in health care says that without Obamacare, we’re in a much bigger mess.  Prior to Obamacare, we were footing the bill for any non-insured person to get treatment in ER’s.  Is Obamacare perfect? No. Is there a better alternative on the table?  No. Is repealing Obamacare a good thing? Not from where i sit.  Romney seems against it because (a) it was proposed by the opposing party; (b) he’d prefer, in a perfect world, it was done by states.  So, he’s little the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  • Social Welfare. We have a lot of poor people in our country and i don’t think we can just ignore them and tell them to get jobs and do better. It’s our responsibility as a nation to handle their plight in a decent way. I’m not exactly what that is, but I’m pretty sure that Romney will do nothing to make their lives better except try to help the country as a whole and hope that the country then will solve this problem for him. His lack of empathy (see his 47% video) really doesn’t want me to have this man as our next President.

Obama Pros

  • Foreign Policy. I like how he’s bringing troops home. I like how he got Bin Laden. I like in general how he’s representing America to other countries.  He’s not arrogant and is respectful.
  • Personality.  I have to admit, i think he’s a pretty cool dude. This shouldn’t matter, but i just want to state it.  He seems quite relatable. He’s into sports, pop culture and seems to understand the world that I live in.
  • Energy policy. I like that he’s so in to new energy. I’m into it too.  On the flip side, I actually wish he’d stop with the loans to new energy companies, but I like that he’s not just handing cash and favors over to the oil companies.  They’re doing fine without our government’s help.
  • Stabilizing the ship.  In 2008, we were in a shit sandwich (520k jobs being lost a month, 1.2 million in 4 months), now we’re not (growing 120k a month). I’m happy for that turnaround, and in general, i do feel like the economy is getting better and recovering. It’s not as fast as everyone would hope, but but, we’re not headed in the wrong direction.

Obama Cons

  • Big Government. He seems fine to increase the size of the government. Government has increased dramatically under his term. His response on how he’s going to fix the economy is to hire more teachers. I like teachers, but that doesn’t seem like the right answer.  I want the government smaller and i think he’s moving us in the wrong direction.
  • Deficit. National debt from 00′, ’04,’08, and ’11 is (in trillions): 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, and 1.4 (source).  That is just too much.  I think Obama believes that it’s ok to run a yearly deficit the size that it is. I’m okay with some national debt, but i’d like it to be smaller, i’d like a plan to pay down our debt, and i don’t want us ever running a yearly deficit. That i think is irresponsible. I believe that Obama says he wants to balance the budget and pay down debt because it’s popular to say, but I don’t actually think he’ll really do anything to bring it down.
  • Change. I used to think that he’d bring more transparency and transformational ideas to government.  I thought he’d change how the President interacts with the public.  I have been disappointed. I still think he’s got the good ideas, but I don’t think he’s had the balls in the past to do them.  Maybe this could happen in a second term when he’s not worried about re-election, but i’ve been disappointed thus far.

As you can see, there aren’t that many pro’s for Omaba but there a lot of cons for Romney.  That’s pretty much where i stand.  Here’s how I’m leaning for the remaining few weeks until the election:

What Romney has to do to win my vote

Romney needs to make me actually believe that he’s not a dooche and won’t just say whatever he needs to say to get elected.  I honestly don’t believe anything coming out of his mouth. I’d like to want to vote for him so we can reduce the size government, but I have no idea where his loyalties lie. I have no reason to believe that it is with people we can trust and instead I feel that it’s with the 1% who will be happy to pad their coffers and let the rest of the country (99%) go to hell.

What Obama would have to do to lose my vote

He has to keep acting like he doesn’t care about the economy, the deficit or what’s going in America.  He’s giving those issues lip service, but i’m not hearing anything that makes me believe.  I hate that he answers most questions with “I want to hire teachers.”  Right now I haven’t heard one thing out of his mouth that makes me want to vote for him other than that he’s not Mitt Romney – which is a pretty good point.

PS: the world “Romney-con” and “Obama-con” are pretty fun to say. Just pointing that out.

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